An accumulating amount of evidence shows that society is face to face
with this grave aspect of the population question. The birth-rate of the
unfit is steadily maintained. Improved conditions of life increase the
number that arrive at maturity and enter the procreative period, so that
not only are defectives born into the world at a constant rate, but
sanitary laws and a growing impatience with the sufferings of the poor,
tend so to improve their conditions of life, as to increase their
birth-rate and their chances of arriving at adult life.
Shortly stated then, the problem that society has to solve is this,--The
birth-rate is rapidly declining amongst the most fit to produce the best
offspring, while it is steadily maintained amongst the least fit, so
that the relative proportion of the unfit born into the world is
annually increasing.
What should be the State's attitude to this problem, and how it should
attempt to solve it will be discussed in detail in a subsequent chapter.
Let it suffice to say now, that the right of the State to interfere
directly with the limitation of families amongst the best classes would
find few advocates amongst reformers.
The right of the State to say, however, that the criminal, the drunkard,
the diseased, and the pauper, shall not propagate their kind should be
stoutly maintained by all rational men.
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